Thursday, December 20, 2007

So as I go through the mental/emotional landscapes that are fraught with pain and anguish, my brain needs to read obsessively about the methodology I am using. I hope it is finding comfort and believes that this notion of accepting the pain will in fact relieve it of the pain.

So I sat there, when the pain came and my breath got short and that potent debilitating mix of anger, frustration, hopelessness threatens to overwhelm my system's ability to process. And I tried to not process, to not think but instead to accept it as real and mine. The quest continues....

Several concepts are central to Hinduism:

1. The first is karma, which is the principle that governs the unfolding of events and is based for a person on the integrity with which he has lived previous lives. Karma is not imposed by an outside, punitive force, or God, but is rather an “exercise of the moral law in the universe,” these laws being inherently within the universe. Karma is encompassed by God/The Ultimate, as is each person’s soul. As both karma and souls are part of God/The Ultimate, karma is not external to the individual, but each is a part of the same greater whole.

2. A related belief is samsara, the process of successive rebirths until one reaches moksha, the complete release from the cycle of rebirths.

3. Hindu traditions promote living with integrity, causing no harm, and progressing further on a spiritual path by living according to dharma, stage-of-life–appropriate guidelines or “patterns of life,” or by one’s “sacred duty.” A central life’s work is to become detached from overinvolvement in the world that’s apparent to us, which is seen as illusory and temporary, and turn toward God/The Ultimate. Many of these concepts are shared by or are similar to concepts in other eastern religions, for example, Buddhism.